"Yo Thad, how late is the Varsity Club open?" (photo: AP / Terry Gilliam)Flashing the energy of a group of grandpa's after Christmas dinner, Ohio State was served a large slice of humble pie in a 76-48 blowout loss at home to Chuggy Bear's Mountaineers today in the Schott.
The heel stomping ended the nation's longest winning streak at 14 and was OSU's first as a ranked team against an unranked foe at home in 28 years (41 games).
Ohio State hung around until the 16:59 mark of the second half when a Wil Buford bucket cut the deficit to 41-35 but WVU's athleticism, a comedy of errors, the return of the concrete shoe offense and listless defense combined to produce a 17-5 Mountaineer run putting the game out of reach at 58-40 with 10:35 to play.
Once again, the OSU offense devolved into four guys standing around while Turner tried to force a drive. Turner shot just 1/5 during the stretch with his teammates combining to shoot 1/7 while the Mountaineers caught fire going 8/11 with six field goals coming on layups or putbacks thanks to non-existent transition defense.
Somewhat surprisingly, Ohio State held their own on the glass (WVU 35, OSU 33) including a 17-15 edge on the offensive boards though it seemed the Buckeyes failed to capitalize on the o-boards after Lauderdale and Mullens both cashed in on putbacks early.
Turner's rough shooting game (10 pts, 4/17 FG) doomed any real chance of victory and no second scorer emerged as the Buckeyes combined to shoot 31% (18/58) from the floor including a Anchorage-esque 2/18 from distance and 10/20 from the stripe.
Diebler threw up a 2/10 stinker in a five point, six rebound effort while Mullens managed only a 1/5 night, good for four points and three boards. It looked like Mullens might be a difference maker early but he slowly disappeared though Lauderdale picked up his slack.
In one of the few bright moments of the game, Dallas swatted his third three point opportunity of the year and added seven rebounds (6 Off), five points and two blocks.
Another non-downer, I'll call it, was Buford having another decent game with 11 points (4/11 FG) and six rebounds. He held his own on the glass against a very athletic team helping offset Lighty's absence.
There's no doubt this team misses something with Lighty out, and Kellogg accurately talked about the hangover effect as it pertains to exactly when the impact of an injury is first felt amongst the team but I don't think a healthy Lighty changes what happened today.
WVU shot 48% from the floor thanks to numerous easy buckets and Lighty might've helped that stat a bit but if you only score 48 points it doesn't really matter and we already know Lighty isn't going to be a consistent offensive threat enough to consistently complement Turner.That brings us to what this team needs to do to score points. I'm not sure what Matta has up his sleeve but if this team is forced to execute in the halfcourt for 40 minutes, it's gonna get ugly. WVU did a great job of slowing OSU's transition game and the end result was no ball movement in downtown Clank City, USA. How bad was it? The Buckeyes assisted on exactly THREE of 18 field goals. That is God awful. And somewhat of a trend.
The off shooting night obviously impacts the assist total but there's still some issues at point guard. Simmons had a nice day shooting the ball (11 pts, 4/7 FG) but he and Crater combined for just one assist.
So what do you guys think? Chalk it up to an off night against an underrated opponent or is trouble looming for this group?
Next up: Conference opener against Iowa @ 4pm, New Year's Eve.
Comments
Trouble looms for this group, and all of Matta's teams, with this offensive strategy. If the threes don't fall, we lose.
THE OSU: officially irrelevant across the board. Painful to admit given our heritage.
They did beat Notre Dame and Miami Fl.
I have to agree with Pogue, if the threes aren't falling I don't know how we score points. But I've never been confused with an offensive genius so I guess I'll let the coach handle it and hope for better things going forward.
Wow what a game huh? The offense looks great!
Anyway.....I have two fiesta bowl tickets for sale...willing to sell for pretty cheap...please contact me at alex@dottingthei.com if you are interested
The good news is that Wisconsin can compete with an ACC team's second string. Yikes.
big 10 national embarrasment day
Trouble is looming for this group. They've been exposed. You cannot play "concrete shoes offense", as you put it very well, and expect to win. There doesn't seem to be any movement in their half court offense. They looked lost and uninspired.
Ouch. That Mountaineer fan that posted on the game preview was sadly almost correct with his 'WVU by 30' prediction. Almost ;)
They really need a point guard, just no rythym offensively.
Mullens needs to get in the weight room.
At least he had some trouble spelling it all out. There's some consolation.
I was so bored watching the OSU offense that I nodded off. Pretty bad, considering I'd been looking forward to a few hours of alone time to watch the game. Ugh.
This should come as no shock to anyone who has watched this team play. I have yet to figure out what the half court offense is other than dribble to the side, hand off, dribble to the top, back to one of the sides, hand off................awful. Seems nobody can make an entry pass to the bigs or the bigs just stand down low and never move or cut. I was thinking 4th in league would be good, now I think that should get Thad coach of the year.
What frustrated me was how they just seemed to give up and and looked lost the whole second half. There wasn't even an attempt to run an offense.
First half we looked out, and if we could actually make a few free throws, or have a couple more of those open 3 pointers go in, we'd have been even or close to it for the half. I don't know what happened that knocked all of the play out of these guys. WVU didn't *look* like they were playing much better, we just looked like we were playing much worse.
I'm hoping it's a bad night for a young team and they'll learn from it (hopefully something about how to not panic when you're down by 10).
The Big 10 is slowly becoming a 2nd tier conference.
In what, basketball? We already are in football. But in basketball, many of the teams have posted a quality vic or two already: Michigan has beat Duke and UCLA, Ohio State beat Notre Dame and Miami, Minnesota beat Louisville, Purdue beat Davidson, Michigan State beat Texas... list goes on. Illinois and Indiana may be down, but the rest of the conference is basically picking up the slack. One ugly loss to an underrated WFVU team doesn't change that.
anybody hear anything about noopy transferring over playing time??
If he is thinking about transferring it is probably more about a freshman being homesick than about playing time.
Is it January 5th yet?
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I've said all along that point guard play and free-throw shooting would cost this team some games. Why did we never try to enter the ball into the post against WVU's 6'8" guys? Prolly because Simmons was too busy throwing up three's without a pass or going one on five trying to penetrate against a defense that has not had to move or rotate because he won't start the offense. It was painful to watch but games like this are to be expected with such a young team.
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